P.J. Allen: Fighting for every breath

Deloris Watson will forever be grateful for the medical care given to her grandson P.J. Allen, one of the children inside the day-care center when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed.

She wonders, though, why she sometimes had to battle so hard to get that care.

One-year-old P.J. suffered severe burns on the insides of his lungs in the explosion. He inhaled so much heat and smoke and gas that the interior sacs of his lungs literally melted.

Years of therapies, surgeries and several tracheotomies ensued, all covered by either the Red Cross, the Oklahoma City Community Foundation or Medicaid. But when P.J. was finally well enough in early 2004 to have the last tracheotomy tube removed from his throat--in his case a particularly delicate procedure requiring the skills of a specialized surgeon--Watson says the agencies suddenly balked.

Watson, who cares for P.J. and agreed with her daughter to adopt him shortly after he was born, sought out an expert surgeon in Cincinnati, who consented to do the operation. But she said Medicaid initially refused to pay for it, insisting that the surgery should be covered by the main bombing relief fund, administered by the Community Foundation.

But Watson said foundation officials told her she would need to allow Oklahoma surgeons to try the operation five times before they would consider paying for the procedure in Cincinnati. Watson refused to put P.J. through such an ordeal.

Finally, after months of argument, Watson said she persuaded Medicaid to cover the surgery, and the Red Cross to pay for the travel expenses.

"There is a fund out there that was set up from [donations from] people from the United States to assist us," Watson said. "They didn't give P.J. the help to get back on his feet. That trache was a direct result of the bombing. And [the Community Foundation] would not pay for the expense of having it taken out."

Community Foundation officials, who at the end of 2004 still had more than $14 million in unspent donations in their Oklahoma City Disaster Relief Fund, dispute that assertion.

"From the onset, the Survivors' Fund has fulfilled every need recommended by the medical staff that has treated P.J.," Nancy Anthony, executive director of the Community Foundation, said in a statement.

Today, P.J. is an unfailingly polite and soft-spoken 11-year-old, excelling in his studies in 6th grade and enthusiastic about sports, even though he gasps for every breath and the diminished capacity of his lungs won't allow him to participate in many activities.

"I can't play football because of the injury, because if I get hit in the chest that could cause damage and I could die," he said. "And I can't play soccer. . . . But I can swim."

P.J.'s injuries, which included hearing damage, turned Watson's life inside out. She had to quit her job as a telephone technician at Southwestern Bell to provide full-time care for him, plunging her into dependence on the Red Cross to pay for many of her basic living expenses. Her relationship with her husband broke down and ended in divorce. She had to learn a whole new way of looking at the world: as a source of potential danger to her child.

"We could walk past somebody who has perfume on that's too strong," Watson said. "Anything can trigger this child's asthma."

Now, though, after 10 years of revolving her world around P.J.--she must still give him breathing treatments nearly every night--Watson is hoping to return to work, although she worries that she lacks sufficient job skills. The Red Cross is pressing the matter: Officials recently informed Watson that her monthly benefits would be cut from $1,200 to $425 this summer.

"They've been wonderful--they've supported us all that time when nobody else was," Watson said. "But 10 years is a long time. Their hope is the same as mine: that I can quickly obtain some type of employment and go back to work."

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About the writer

A decade ago, Howard Witt, now the Tribune's Southwest bureau chief, covered the Oklahoma City bombing. Over the past year, he has returned to the city repeatedly to examine the long-term fallout from the tragedy. Previously, Witt was the Tribune's chief diplomatic correspondent based in Washington. He has also been stationed in Toronto, Johannesburg and Moscow as a Tribune foreign correspondent and in Los Angeles as bureau chief. He joined the Tribune as an intern in 1982. He can be contacted at hwitt@tribune.com.